The Brief

When wildfires tore through the Sierra Nevada in 2020 and 2021, they burned thousands of giant sequoias at rates not seen for millennia.

But the destruction would have been far worse had the trees not undergone prescribed burns, according to a new UC Davis study published in Nature Communications.

“We estimate that giant sequoias with those prescribed burn treatments within the last 10 years ended up being about four times more likely to survive,” said Dan Dixon, who led the study as a UC Davis postdoctoral researcher.

In addition to being beloved namesakes of a popular national park, California's sequoias can store significant amounts of carbon, absorbing it from the atmosphere and making the trees a positive force in a changing climate. Climate change, however, is driving the kinds of fires and other threats that could reduce their numbers further.

The study

Using airborne sensing and satellites, the researchers gathered images of around 26,400 of the trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks before and after the fires. They then used neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence, to identify whether the trees were living or dead.

Dixon said the neural networks allowed the researchers to detect whether giant sequoias had survived based on factors like how green they were and what the canopy looked like. The neural network was trained on data collected from over 1,000 giant sequoias visited by researchers on the ground.

“This is kind of the future of this field, linking work like this: using imagery, but then also validating it on the ground,” said Ashley Grupenhoff, a fire ecologist at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who was not involved in the study.

Hundreds of beloved giant sequoias survived wildfire because of prescribed burns, according to a new paper.

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UC Davis

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With researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service, the team compared the images with areas with prescribed fire and found that the burns saved about 1,900 giant sequoias in the 2020 and 2021 wildfires. An additional 3,900 would have survived if all the trees had been treated, the study found.

“I think it did something that few other studies have, which is really looking at that individual tree level and mak[ing] causal inferences that really show the importance of prescribed fire,” Grupenhoff said.

The future of prescribed fire

Giant sequoias are adapted to resist low-intensity fires. But the study notes that with climate change increasing the frequency and ferocity of large fires, even these resilient trees are becoming more vulnerable. Setting more low-intensity fires could be integral to saving these trees from catastrophic wildfires, experts said.

Prescribed fire “burns off the susceptible material that wants to burn in a wildfire scenario when it’s hotter and drier and the winds are blowing faster,” said Jeffrey Stackhouse, an advisor at UC Agriculture and Natural Resources who was not involved in the study. “It makes trees a lot more resilient.”

In California, more than 120,000 acres are treated every year with prescribed burning conducted by Cal Fire and partner agencies, and controlled burning has been a longstanding tradition for some Indigenous tribes.

The 2020 Castle Fire in Sequoia National Park killed thousands of the park's namesake giant trees, some of which may have been more than 2,000 years old.

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Anthony Caprio

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National Park Service

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The study comes at a time when community-led efforts to conduct prescribed fires are increasing, experts said.

“A lot of communities are tired of waiting for someone to come do it for them,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, the director of the UC ANR Fire Network who was not involved in the study.

In 2017, Quinn-Davidson and Stackhouse started the first prescribed fire association in California. Today, dozens of volunteers conduct prescribed fires to clean up dry wood, leaves and other fuel as part of a “big social movement” around controlled burning, Quinn-Davidson said.

“It’s a big moment in time for this work,” Quinn-Davidson said.

The fast-moving Dove Fire near a Yosemite gateway town jolted California out of a relatively quiet fire summer, forcing road closures and the evacuations of hundreds of homes.

Former U.S. Forest Service firefighter John Buckley wasn’t surprised to see the fire taking off last Sunday. Driving through the area in the Central Sierra foothills earlier that day, he remembers telling his wife those fuels looked ready to burn.

“We drive back, and they're burning over at the city of Sonora,” said Buckley, now the executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center. “The fuels are now quite primed for burning, and they're only going to get drier.”

Firefighters have gained the upper hand against the 226-acre blaze, which Cal Fire suspects was set by a reckless 30-year-old man. But high temperatures are looming — and new research puts numbers to the intuitive follow-on: with heat, comes fire.

It’s far too early in California’s fire year to make any conclusions or predictions. But with fires devouring millions of acres in the Western U.S., Canada, and Europe, California stands out for what has been, so far, a below-average summer.

To date, roughly 4,030 wildfires have burned a little over 208,000 acres in the state — down from a five-year average of nearly 5,300 fires burning more than 300,000 acres at this point, according to Cal Fire data.

Still, Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuña says he avoids the word ‘quiet.’

“There is a superstition that when you use words like ‘quiet, slow, bored’ in the fire station, that just means that you're about to get hit with an amazingly busy shift,” he said.

California has benefited from lucky weather conditions so far, despite a low snowpack and blistering March, according to John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced.

That’s about to change. “Now, of course,” he said, “we have a heat wave on our doorstep.”

National Weather Service offices across the state are warning of soaring temperatures starting later this week. The Los Angeles/Oxnard office said conditions will shift to “dangerously hot” by Friday.

That combination — heat waves and fire activity — is a common feature of western wildfires, Abatzoglou’s team found in a recent study published in the journal Science Advances and led by scientist Dmitri Kalashnikov. 

The paper found that just under half of the burned area in warm-season months from 2001 to 2024 occurred during or in the wake of a heatwave, particularly in forests.

Heatwaves, defined as at least three days in a row with temperatures soaring past the 90th percentile, make up 15% or less of the warm season. But climate change is fueling an increase.

Abatzoglou pointed to a few reasons for the link. Heatwaves create chronic conditions that lead to drier, more flammable fuels. They also mean hotter nights, which previous research found increases nighttime fire intensity, shuttering a critical window for fire suppression. The researchers found that heatwaves can also prime conditions for lightning, which has sparked some of California’s biggest blazes.

“And then it’s off to the races in terms of fire activity,” Abatzoglou said.

The paper’s findings don’t mean all heatwaves will bring an uptick in fire activity, he added. That still requires ignitions in the right place, at the right time.

Acuña cautioned Californians against creating those sparks. That means mowing before 10 a.m. on hot days or skipping the yard work during a red flag warning. It also means securing tow chains so they don’t drag and spark against the road, and not parking hot cars on dry grass.

California sought and received federal funding assistance related to the Dove Fire within hours. But a separate, monthslong fight between Sacramento and Washington continues over slower-moving wildfire recovery funds — including hundreds of millions in aid tied to last year's L.A. fires that Gov. Gavin Newsom said in May FEMA was still sitting on.

As for predictions for the season ahead, Acuña likes to make them about as much as he likes the word ‘quiet.’

“It depends on what the weather brings us,” he said. “If it brings us hot, windy, red flag warning conditions, then that could certainly be a problem. If it brings us rain, well, that brings us a totally different concern. We are ready to respond.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A SoCal land trust has officially purchased nearly 63 acres of land near Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest for permanent preservation.

Friends of Big Bear Valley and the San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust successfully raised more than $10 million in less than six months through thousands of small donations and one big check, the groups announced last week. A surge in donations came amid public interest in the fate of Jackie, who continues to recuperate after getting into an altercation with other eagles.

There are several signs that the eagle receiving care is Jackie, but we’ve cautioned that we can’t be 100% certain it’s her since Jackie isn’t banded. However, Friends of Big Bear Valley believes it to be the famed raptor, which is why you’ll see us refer to the rescued eagle as Jackie in this story.

The land, tucked away along the north shore of Big Bear Lake, was supposed to be turned into a housing project called Moon Camp — at least until now.

The tree-lined acres will remain largely untouched for the rare plants and wildlife who live in the area, including Jackie and Shadow and the chicks they raise during nesting seasons, according to officials.

Jenny Voisard, Friends of Big Bear Valley spokesperson, told LAist the land is important for all wildlife as it’s an “ecological corridor” that connects the lake to the forest.

“The environment is getting increasingly fragmented and being able to preserve that does so much,” she said. “It helps the flying squirrels, it helps the 17 acres of rare and endemic plants that exist nowhere else in the world. It gives a passageway for wildlife.”

How we got here

The “Save Moon Camp” fundraiser was a historic effort for Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs the popular YouTube livestream of Jackie and Shadow’s nest.

Fans from around the world sent more than 25,000 small donations, including California elementary school classes who raised money for the eagles and a $20,000 gift that arrived with a handwritten letter of support. Those donations made up about half of the total fundraising goal.

“The kids especially — they get it,” she said, adding that they’ve been moved to tears by notes from parents and teachers. “And they have just been amazing.”

The other roughly $5.5 million came from Anna and Greg Brockman, the latter of which is the president and co-founder of OpenAI. Anna Brockman is a huge fan of the eagle livestream and loves watching Jackie and Shadow, according to Voisard.

“We are so appreciative of the San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust and everyone who came together to preserve this incredible ecosystem, the life it will help sustain, and the forest that will be protected for generations to come,” Anna Brockman said in a statement last week.

Preserving the land has been decades in the making. Sandy Steers, the late executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley, pushed back against the proposed housing development for years, including in court and to county officials. Steers died the week before the fundraiser launched, which officials said was now being held in her honor.

What happens next?

The plan is no longer to have the acres be protected under the U.S. Forest Service, as Friends of Big Bear Valley initially hoped. Some fans shared concerns about the state of the agency under President Donald Trump. Specifically, Voisard said there was a recent change to the Endangered Species Act that could affect how habitats are protected.

“The Land Trust and Friends of Big Bear Valley didn't feel that it made sense to transfer the land over to the USFS at that point,” she said.

The acres will instead be protected by the San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust for perpetuity. It’s no stranger to the preservation process, having helped conserve more than 15,000 acres of land since it was founded in 1995, according to the organization.

The proposed project site can be seen from the nest livestream.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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Access to the area around Jackie and Shadow's nest is restricted in Big Bear Valley on June 13, 2026.

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Makenna Cramer

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LAist

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According to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the Moon Camp site is the last undisturbed shoreline left on the lake, and preserving it helps protect Jackie and Shadow, as well as the more than 250 other bird species flying through the Big Bear area.

That could be especially important if, or when, Jackie is ready to return to the nest.

“She gets to come back and it won't be different, they won't be starting construction on anything,” she said. “Provided she gets to come back to Shadow and us.”

If you live in California, chances are you’ve seen the ads that say “Home insurance rates skyrocket” and “The FAIR Plan is broken.”

They urge you to contact your state representative to ask them to “fix our wildfire problem to make California more affordable.”

Those ads are connected to what Los Angeles fire survivors, consumer advocacy groups and the insurance industry say is a secretive, last-minute attempt by Gov. Gavin Newsom to help utilities reduce how much they pay for wildfires they cause.

With the legislative session set to resume next week and run through the end of the month, the governor’s staff has been talking with state lawmakers about addressing challenges around wildfire recovery and rising catastrophic risk in California, a spokesperson for his office confirmed.

Lawmakers have not released the text of the proposals. Newsom spokesperson Anthony Martinez would not say whether the legislation will do the following, as alleged by fire survivors and a consumer advocacy group:

• Limit compensation for fire victims’ pain and suffering.
• Eliminate insurance companies’ right to recover wildfire costs from utilities or other corporations.
• Cap attorneys’ fees, making it harder for fire survivors to get representation.

Every Fire Survivors Network, a group started by survivors of last year’s Eaton Fire, and Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group that focuses on insurance and other issues, say the bills would shift recovery costs from utility companies to insurance policyholders. Insurance industry representatives agree. The strange bedfellows are calling out the late political maneuvering known as “gut-and-amend,” which lawmakers use to create bills by gutting other pending bills and replacing their language for a different purpose and are meant to be fast-tracked.

The groups are speaking out against the purported bill package, which appears to align with the goals of Wildfire Survivors First, a campaign funded by utilities that, despite its name, has no wildfire survivors groups among its supporters.

“Californians deserve a government that works in the open, not behind closed doors,” said Joy Chen, leader of the Every Fire Survivors Network, in a press conference last week. She urged the governor to “choose democracy over corporate special interests.”

In an open letter to the governor, Chen laid out how she said Newsom has, over the years, already helped utilities shift responsibility for wildfires they cause.

The state's three major utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric, have tremendous influence in California. They have what seems to be an unlimited number of names, entities and affiliates; donate to campaigns by Democrats and Republicans; and together employ hundreds of lobbyists who advocate for hundreds of bills every session. In the 2025-26 session, their donations to sitting legislators totaled more than $1.2 million, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy Database.

Martinez said the discussions between the governor’s office and California lawmakers are informed by a report released in April by the California Earthquake Authority, which under Senate Bill 254 was tasked with studying how the state should “responsibly and equitably allocate the burdens from natural catastrophes.”

That bill — rewritten so late last year that it required the Legislature to extend its session — also allows utilities to shift additional wildfire costs to consumers if their costs exceed a wildfire fund created in 2019 through legislation also backed by the governor. The three major utilities paid half of the $21 billion fund. Californians paid the other half through monthly surcharges on their electric bills. Eaton Fire survivors have sued Edison over what they say is negligence that led to the fire; the cost of claims from the fire are expected to exceed what’s in the fund.

Among the April report’s many recommendations is to put more money in the wildfire fund by increasing the surcharge on utility customers by $8.50 a month, bringing the total to $11 a month.

Nathan Click, a spokesperson for Wildfire Survivors First, said the campaign is calling on lawmakers to “urgently implement” many of the conclusions in the SB 254 report, which he said “highlighted how payouts to financial middlemen — like trial attorneys, hedge funds and insurance companies — are often paid out before wildfire victims receive a single dollar for rebuilding.”

Click did not answer CalMatters’ question about why there are no fire survivors groups on the list of more than 200 organizations that support the effort. Most are local chambers of commerce or business groups.

CalMatters contacted nearly a dozen of the organizations. Ten did not respond or would not make their executives available for an interview.

But the chief executive of one of them, Jennifer Gray Thompson, said she changed her mind about participating once she realized the coalition did not include fire victims groups. Her organization, After the Fire, which helps support leaders in communities around the country that have experienced mega fires, was briefly on the list but was removed promptly at her request, she said.

“I’m from Sonoma,” Thompson told CalMatters. “I’m a national advocate for fire victims. I’m definitely not on their side,” she added. Former state Sen. Bill Dodd, a Democrat whom she said did a lot of good for fire survivors when he was in office, was among those who contacted her to solicit her group’s support for the effort, according to emails she shared with CalMatters.

Dodd did not return a phone call and text message from CalMatters.

A construction crew works on a home as Eaton Fire survivors and community supporters attend a news conference in support of Senate Bill 1090, the “Keep Altadena Land in Altadena Hands” Act, in Altadena on June 29, 2026. The bill aims to limit high-density development by outside investors on lots where single-family homes stood before the Eaton Fire.

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Mario Tama

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The Bay Area Council, another supporter, counts PG&E among its member businesses. Spokesperson Rufus Jeffris said the council “generally supports sensible policies and investments that reduce wildfire risk and increase community wildfire resilience and balance the diverse needs of business, consumers and residents.”

A Consumer Watchdog analysis of utilities’ required financial disclosures shows that 66% of the non-governmental organizations on the list have received utility-industry contributions, grants, sponsorships and more worth about $7.3 million from 2023 to 2025.

Click called Consumer Watchdog a “shadow lobby firm for trial attorneys” and said “it should come as no surprise that they are trying to protect a system that prioritizes trial attorneys over wildfire victims.”

Spokespeople for PG&E, Edison and SDG&E referred CalMatters to the Wildfire Victims First campaign regarding the campaign and the legislative proposal.

What state lawmakers are saying or not saying

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from the Los Angeles area whose constituents include survivors of the Palisades Fire, attended the Friday press conference.

“Any solutions that we have have to (hold) the responsible parties accountable,” Allen said in a room full of fire survivors.

Who’s responsible for the costs of wildfire recovery is important to both Allen’s current job and possibly his future one: He is chair of the Senate energy and utilities committee, and is running for insurance commissioner.

Allen’s spokesperson, Ben Cheever, said the senator was not available for an interview about the specifics of the legislative package.

But he sent the following statement from Allen: “I will carefully review any proposal put forth to ensure we hold responsible parties accountable while meaningfully reducing risk to improve affordability. We should not simply shift around the costs consumers pay without addressing this more holistically.”

Fellow Democrat Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, who represents Eaton Fire survivors, said in an interview with CalMatters that if a legislative package contains the proposals fire survivors suspect they do, she would have a “tremendous issue” with them being presented at the last minute. She also said she has talked with other members of the Legislature who “are very upset with what’s taking place.”

Perez said she would oppose any proposal that limits non-economic damages for fire survivors: “I represent Altadena. I have a friend who lost his sister in the fire. How do you put a price tag on losing your sibling?”

The senator also said she was “so frustrated and shocked” that SB 254, which started off as a bill intended to reduce profits for investor-owned utilities, ended up helping utilities instead during the last three days of last year’s session.

“That’s not the way government should work,” she said.

CalMatters also contacted several other lawmakers or their offices, especially ones who lead related committees. The following Democratic lawmakers’ offices did not respond: Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas; Assemblymember Lisa Calderon, who leads the insurance committee; and Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, who leads the utilities and energy committee.

Spokespeople for Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limon and Sen. Josh Becker responded with emailed statements similar to that sent by Newsom spokesperson Martinez: “The current system is unsustainable and not working for fire survivors, utility customers, or insurance policyholders.”

The insurance industry’s concerns

Insurance industry representatives say if insurance companies can’t recover wildfire costs from utilities, also known as subrogation, they will inevitably raise premiums.

“We don't think it's fair to make insurance policyholders pay more to bail out utility shareholders,” said Denni Ritter, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

Ritter also pushed back against the assertion by the utilities’ campaign that insurance companies usually recover their costs from utilities before paying out claims to their policyholders: “It's not like AAA goes, ‘OK, we'll pay you once we've recovered from the utilities’.”

Rex Frazier is president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, which represents the largest insurers operating in the state. He said this campaign is the latest attempt by utilities to chip away at their industry’s possible liability for wildfires. Sometimes, the insurance industry has had conversations with utilities, he said. That’s not happening this time, he said.

Now he, like other Californians, is seeing the ads from the Wildfire Victims First campaign, whose website says it’s funded by PG&E, SDG&E and SCE shareholders and three other organizations.

“We’re trying to understand why they’re talking about the insurance market,” Frazier said. “We can’t get a clear answer about what they have in mind.”

Jeanne Kuang contributed reporting.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

As Hurricane Genevieve batters the Southern California coast with heavy swells this week, Long Beach city crews are busy reinforcing protective sand berms and taking extra precautions along vulnerable beachfronts ahead of elevated tides and a regional high surf advisory.

The worst will come at night, officials say. Forecasts show lunar tides will crest over 6 feet and waves will range 4 to 5 feet high on Wednesday and Thursday between 9 and 11 p.m.

It will then taper down through Saturday, with waves expected to drop down to 2 to 4 feet.

Nighttime crews will be on standby during the peak tides, while daytime staffers will spend the morning on frontloaders, reinforcing the sand berms along the Peninsula that forms Alamitos Bay and staging plywood along vulnerable parts of its boardwalks known to flood.

A truck brings in sand to rebuild a berm that was washed away on part of the Peninsula in Long Beach on Wednesday, July 29, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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The swell is elevated but manageable, local officials say, noting the breakwater and Catalina Island naturally absorb a lot of the wave energy coming from Genevieve, now a Category 4 storm, which continued its stretch across the Eastern Pacific this week.

“We’re planning like we’ve always done,” said Marine Safety Chief Gonzalo Medina, adding: “I don’t foresee anything being different about this one in particular, but Mother Nature is highly unpredictable, especially at sea.”

The city’s primary defense efforts are centered on a narrow strip of oceanfront homes along the Peninsula between 62nd and 69th places, which is exposed to swells that pass through the gap outside the breakwater and jetty that juts from the Alamitos Bay channel.

Dozers were seen early Wednesday, rebuilding a 40-yard stretch of the large sand berm — typically maintained at 7 to 8 feet high — after overnight waves breached a section on Tuesday and knocked over the raised line of plywood.

Kelly Armstrong, a city beach superintendent, said night crews will remain deployed over the next three days to fortify the beach as needed.

The expected tides are elevated but slightly lower than the three previously seen this summer, he said, with waves that were several feet higher. Prior events this summer did not result in any property damage or injuries.

A greater worry, officials say, is the frequency of high tides that trample through the city’s sand walls and flood streets, as changing ocean dynamics and El Niño conditions spurred by climate change create taller and warmer tides — above predictions this season, according to the National Weather Service.

A tractor with a front loader rebuilds the sand berm at the end of the peninsula in Long Beach on Wednesday, July 29, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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“The tides that we’re seeing now, we did not see in the past,” Todd Leland, manager of the city’s Marine Bureau, told LAist. “We used to not have to build berms year-round. We’d only have to do it on an occasional basis here on the peninsula.”

The city spends about $1 million annually trucking sand six days a week from the wider western beaches back to the Peninsula to replace what waves wash away.

Long Beach is nearing an awarded contract to commence a $14.5 million dredging project that, if approved, should start in late October and extend the beach out by 260 feet using 415,000 cubic yards of sand from the entrance channel of Alamitos Bay.

In the meantime, local life along the waterfront carried on largely as normal on Wednesday.

More than 600 youth aged 9 to 17 arose early in the morning to take part in the Ironguard race — a two-mile swim around the Long Beach Pier and a 4-mile run. It went off without a hitch, Medina said.